Left in limbo by surrogacy laws: ‘We can’t come back home to Ireland because our daughter isn’t recognised as Irish’

For a gay Irish couple who had their daughter through surrogacy outside of Ireland, coming home is a distant dream until the country recognises their child as a citizen

Mark O’Looney and Eoin Cannon enjoying Christmas with their daughter Aria

Azmia Riaz

Mark O’Looney and Eoin Cannon always wanted to be parents. They met 10 years ago when O’Looney auditioned for a part in a musical that Cannon was directing — he didn’t get the part but he did find the love of his life. They migrated from Dublin to New York City in 2018 and got married in a quiet ceremony in Central Park in 2021. Halfway through building their dream family, they found that fatherhood would be a double-edged sword — the birth of their daughter through surrogacy in the US meant that their family continues to be unrecognised in Ireland.

“We both knew from the second we were born that we wanted children. We grew up in big families with many nieces and nephews, so we wanted the same for ourselves. We considered all the options like adopting or fostering but we finally decided to go with gestational surrogacy. It was expensive, and it took us a long time, but with the help of my employer, we were able to do it independently without an agency,” says O’Looney.